The Civil Rights Lobby: The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Second Reconstruction By Shamira Gelbman . Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2021. 203 pp., $29.95 Cloth.

Abstract

The story of the legal and policy transformations of the “ Second Reconstruction ” often focuses on dramatic events in legislatures, courts, and protests. In The Civil Rights Lobby , Shamira Gelbman shifts our attention to an understudied group of actors: the lobbyists who connected advocacy organizations to policymakers in Washington. The book examines the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the most prominent civil rights-focused interest group coalition in national politics, from its early status as a “ permanent ad hoc committee ” in the 1950s to its central coordinating role in the lobbying campaign for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Gelbman traces these developments through a close analysis of the LCCR ’ s archives, supplemented by records of member organizations and leaders and interviews with two participants in the coalition ’ s 1960s lobbying campaigns. The book ’ s core argument is that interest group coalitions ’ organizational structures and procedures affect its coordination capacity , defined as “ the facility with which they can identify coalition positions and mobilize the resources of their member organizations for concerted action in pursuit of shared objectives ” (14). Building on a literature that views interest group coalitions as having the potential to send robust policy signals to policymakers, Gelbman argues that this potential is contingent on their capacity to coordinate the interests, goals, and resources of diverse member organizations.